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the facility are currently suspended following an electrical trip in February. Given the over- supplied market, in which a growing number of buyers is requesting to cancel or delay contracted cargoes, the outage has actually come at a rela- tively opportune time.
The facility has the capacity to produce at least 5.3mn tonnes per year (t/y) of liquids, com- prised of 3.6mn t/y of LNG, 1.3mn t/y of con- densate and 400,000 t/y of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG).
Shell operates Prelude with a 67.5% interest, while Japan’s Inpex holds a 17.5% stake in the project, Korea Gas (KOGAS) has 10% and Tai- wan’s CPC owns 5%.
Shell’s plan for the development of Crux involves connecting the field to Prelude with a 165-km pipeline. The Crux project will consist
of a not normally manned (NNM) platform with five production wells, in water depths of around 165 metres. The field will be operated remotely from Prelude. The project is anticipated to have a lifespan of at least 20 years, though this can be extended through future investments.
The front-end engineering design (FEED) process for Crux has already started in anticipa- tion of the now delayed FID.
Prelude FLNG currently sources its feedstock gas from the Prelude field, but Shell plans for the facility to have a multi-decade lifespan that will require additional sources of gas, of which Crux is set to be the first.
On its website, Shell shows Crux as being in operation from around 2025, but this will need to be revised to account for the deferral of the FID.™
OMV hits oil and gas offshore NZ
PROJECTS & COMPANIES
AUSTRIAN developer OMV has struck oil and gas at its Toutouwai-1 exploration well offshore New Zealand’s Taranaki region, the company said on March 14.
OMV started drilling Toutouwai-1, which lies in around 130 metres of water, in March. It said preliminary well results were encourag- ing, with several hydrocarbon-charged layers encountered in the Cretaceous sandstones.
The well, the company’s last in New Zealand for the foreseeable future owing to the corona- virus (COVID-19) crisis, was drilled to a depth of 4,317 metres using the COSL Prospector semi-submersible rig.
OMV’s senior vice-president of Australasia, Gabriel Selischi, said: “If future appraisal activi- ties confirm the initial drilling results, this could prove to be an exciting outcome for our country’s future energy supply.”
He added: “There has not been a major energy find in New Zealand for over a decade and we know that new domestic energy supply is critical to ongoing security of supply, affordability and ensur- ing a smooth transition to a renewable future.”
OMV, however, added that because of the oper- ational risks that COVID-19 posed to its offshore exploration efforts it had curtailed the testing phase.
It followed OMV’s announcement earlier this month that it was indefinitely postponing the fourth well – Maui-8 – in its planned drill- ing campaign offshore Taranaki. Two previous wells – Gladstone-1 and Tawhaki-1 – were both unsuccessful.
Selischi said: “Given that New Zealand is now in a state of emergency and at a Level Four COVID-19 pandemic alert, this will be the end
of our 2019-2020 exploration drilling campaign and no further wells will be drilled.”
OMV said it was working with joint venture partners Mitsui E&P Australia and SapuraOMV over what needed to be done to determine Tout- ouwai-1’s commercial viability. The well is being plugged and abandoned and COSL Prospector is set to depart the region later this month.
The Petroleum Exploration and Production Association of New Zealand (PEPANZ) hailed the drilling results, with chief executive John Carnegie saying: “Reports of the demise of our sector have been greatly and prematurely exag- gerated. This is good news at a time when New Zealand’s economy really needs it.”™
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 15 16•April•2020